Bill C-10 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and to provide for certain other measures

This enactment amends the Air Canada Public Participation Act to provide that Air Canada’s articles of continuance contain a requirement that it carry out aircraft maintenance activities in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba and to provide for certain other measures related to that obligation.

Air Canada Public Participation Act

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Again, I am not going to speak about it but I am sure that the member for Elmwood—Transcona is going to briefly give an answer.

I want to remind people to address their questions to the Chair and not to individual members.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would ask Canadians listening at home and members in the chamber to imagine what would happen to their communities if a large number of working people lost the good-paying jobs that support their families. It does not take a vivid imagination to realize what that would mean for those communities. It would be bad for families. It would be bad for the country. It would be bad for the economy.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to rise on this issue, talking about employment and the value-added chain of jobs that are important for this nation. I am just sad it is being done in such haste and such waste by the Liberal government.

It is unfortunate, as we struggle to protect value-added jobs in our economy, that we have, quite frankly, a significant opportunity lost, and we are rewarding bad behaviour. We hear this lingo coming from only a few people from the Liberal Party on this, whether it be question period or debate in the House of Commons, because others do not seem to want to participate. In fact, it is going back to the future. We are going back and pulling that to the future right now, because this legislation is retroactively going back on a deal that Canadians had actually gained through bargaining.

This would be like individuals winning the lottery. They would get their ticket. They would win the lottery and cash it in, and then they realize 10 years later that they did not really need that money so they give it all back to the lottery commission.

This is what is happening. It is a negotiated deal. It is like individuals saying to their auto insurer or their house insurer that they really do not need protection for house damage, car damage, or whatever. The individual knows these insurers are struggling for whatever reason, and tells them they are off the hook now for that deal.

The interesting thing about this is that we are talking about a private corporation that was founded by the taxpayers of this nation. It is rewarded by numerous grants and legislative processes. It is to bring competition into the market for fairness for Canadians, eventually privatized, cashed out, bailed out, received numerous injections of public support, including to this day most recently corporate tax reductions. The corporation got all that investment and all it was asked to do was keep some Canadian jobs. To keep some Canadian jobs is what it was asked in this brokered, open deal that the public can see, Parliament can see. Its CEOs, new, current, and in the future, as part of their due diligence were to run a company, to run a business and to put the Canadian flag on their product. The loss of that is the constant outsourcing that has taken place.

What is really interesting about the bill is the other subsidization that is taking place in this country, and investment by our working class in terms of education we are now throwing out the window with all those value-added jobs. Young people were promised that if they went to school, got a trade, and contributed, they would be rewarded. This is part of that demise, only hurried by the Liberals.

What the Liberals want to do to the public is just like a crop-duster, running across and dumping its stuff. It is to put the shroud in front of Canadians and say we negotiated a deal, but because we finally won one, we are used to actually losing lots of deals, but we won one, we would like to give it back.

This deal was about public investment. We should think about men and women and the youth of this country who are getting trained right now. They are spending their hard-earned money, taking loans way above the loan rate for many other types of borrowing, which is absurd to begin with. They will have to pay it back, become consumers in our society, start a family, and plan for the future. They are losing good pensioned jobs, going to work in a safe environment, as best as can be legislated, getting a return so they could actually raise a family and continue that contribution into the economic field for all Canadians.

Now we have given up on that dream, despite that investment by those students and those going through our educational system, despite the fact that they are going to pay for it not only while they are in school, but getting out of school for a number of years. It will delay decisions that they make about having children, buying homes, being able to participate in the economy and buying a car, hopefully built in Windsor. Nonetheless, all those things are going to be delayed because people are under a greater cloud of debt.

On top of that, which is also a horrible situation, think about how much taxpayers' money we are investing under Canada student loans and the provinces are doing so to actually put that forth to get people and meanwhile, what we are doing is a classic move in football. When a running back is in trouble, he does a stiff arm, because it protects himself and pushes away using the head of a player coming in. This is equivalent to the Liberal policy right now.

After all that investment, after all that technological development, and I would be remiss to not talk about how the aerospace industry in particular has benefited from tax SR and ED investments. These are corporate subsidized initiatives to help manufacturing and development of products in the aerospace industry. It has been one of the largest organizations to receive these types of tax breaks. Tax breaks that come from individuals who live on Parent Street, on Ottawa Street, on First Street, on Main Street, on a number of different streets all across our country. We have invested collectively to have a value-added job at the end of the day to continue the chain of progress for workers. That is where we are lost in this debate. The chain of progress for workers is broken and we now will reap the so-called rewards of, well, we will see what happens.

That is no way to negotiate. That is no way to play poker. That is no way to do anything in life in the sense that if we win or gain something through giving something, it is called negotiation. It is fair negotiations that brought Air Canada to the point it is today. The reality is that these workers have missed opportunities and missed jobs that affect communities.

We are fortunate in Windsor to have new auto hiring, despite the fact that there was no government support whatsoever because of broken policies of the past that never worked. We have over 1,000 workers back in the auto chain despite us not having a national auto strategy and basically they were fed up and moved ahead with Fiat, Chrysler, and Unifor. That injection moved the unemployment rate that led the nation for 10 years to now down to 6% or 7%. We are happy about that. We are happy that worked, but it came almost at the end of the line.

There was investment in the past for that by the public. The government actually made money back in the day for that, but we now have a surge in value-added jobs in Windsor at the moment thanks to those organizations and those workers. Losing these types of jobs can make the difference between a rebound for a community and the distance of where we go.

I want to conclude by saying we have to be very clear about the precedents that we set here. The precedent is that we can reach back in time and grasp defeat out of the jaws of victory for Canadian taxpayers. That is truly unfortunate for the youth of our nation.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, The Environment; the hon. member for Flamborough—Glanbrook, Foreign Affairs; the hon. member for Essex, International Trade.

The hon. member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member across the aisle for the entertaining analogies this afternoon. I too like Michael J. Fox movies, but I feel there is a lot more stretching in here than there was in yoga today.

The member opposite talked a bit about the auto industry and how modernizing it worked out very well. How does he feel this will not work well for the aeronautics industry?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately I cannot speak to the member's experience in yoga, but the reality here is with regard to the seriousness related to our youth, employment and setting a pattern for redevelopment, and also having innovation take its place in the footprint of manufacturing.

In response to her question, the seriousness we are tackling right now is moving innovation to manufacturing in Canada. With the loss of that going to the United States, Germany, and other jurisdictions, even committees, like the industry committee, are now studying how we turn that around for Canada. Aerospace and other industries have transferrable technology and other types of innovation that can propel us to local development of manufacturing for our future. Without that connection of jobs at the end of the day for workers, we miss the next leap of that.

I am tired of Canadian ideas going abroad to other countries to be developed into products that are then bought back into Canada. It is time to stop that, and have them built in Canada by Canadians, for our future.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, when we talk about losing 2,600 jobs, and these are 2,600 good jobs, we must not forget that real people work in those jobs.

In other words, 2,600 men and women will lose their jobs in maintenance. The government says that it is no big deal, because other jobs will be created in construction. However, that work is not done by the same men and women.

This means that the Liberals are sacrificing 2,600 people's jobs in order to perhaps create jobs for other people in the manufacturing of other planes. What we are really talking about is definite job losses for jobs that might be created elsewhere. The Liberals are forgetting the human factor here.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, that question is a really critical one. The issue is the jobs they have themselves, but then we add on the multiplier effect, and it is quite significant.

In the auto sector and the aerospace sector, multiple jobs have been created after that one job. When we have a multiplier effect of seven, we are talking about almost 20,000 jobs. Those are value-added jobs that create other jobs.

That is why we are getting it in Windsor and that is why I give credit to the developers in terms of the company, and Unifor and the workers. We have a fight-back on manufacturing right now, and we want to win that. Not only does it create that one job, it is the multiplier effect from that, which is thousands of jobs.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, could the member shed some light on something? We have heard the government try to suggest that the previous NDP government of Manitoba had somehow endorsed this legislation. My understanding was to the contrary, that it had not, and in fact that both of the major parties in Manitoba were concerned about the job losses associated with the departure of Aveos.

Seeing as the member is from the NDP, could he clarify the fact that frankly it is provincial governments and a wide variety of different civil society groups that are opposed to this legislation?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is nothing less than an attempted smoke screen from the government. It shows the desperation in this matter of debate.

Maybe I could get unanimous consent to talk about all the provincial hypocrisy of the Liberals in the past. We could be here all night, but my voice will not hold out.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today for the second time in debate on Bill C-10. I will share with members my thoughts on the bill, which stem more from my concern about the government's reckless handling of the airline and aerospace industry in Canada, in particular its handling and circumstances that gave rise to Bill C-10.

In an era of openness, transparency, and sunny ways, Bill C-10 has arrived in Parliament under the most cloudy, or perhaps murky ways. The government, and in particular the Minister of Transport, who is an honourable member of the House and a great Canadian, need to be more forthright on the bill. Some of the concerns we have heard from my friends in the New Democratic Party stem as much from this uncertainty on how Bill C-10 came to the House.

I say concern about process because the House should have process that is transparent, and we should know how bills have come to the House. I agree in some ways with the substance of Bill C-10 on a specific level, and I will explain why. However, I would prefer the government to be open and transparent with the House and manage this industry, our airlines and transportation in a way that reflects the modern realities of this global sector where Canada is currently extremely competitive, and in fact a world leader. However, due to the inaction and poor vision we have seen in six months already, the industry could indeed suffer.

Bill C-10 is really the completion of something that started in the 1980s under the Mulroney government, when Air Canada was privatized. It was a crown corporation. My first few flights on Air Canada would have been when it was a crown company and a crown carrier. Like many countries in the world, in the early days of aviation, to keep their business and society competitive and modern, a lot of governments owned their national airlines. However, starting in the 1960s through to the 1980s, most of the developed world devolved ownership.

We are not elected, and we do not have a government in Ottawa to run businesses on behalf of Canadians, but often in a sector, particularly like aerospace, the trail-blazing front edge of an industry, like passenger and cargo transport, can be assisted by government.

By the time the Mulroney government came in, Canada was joining most modern nations and allowing the private sector and marketplace to run and operate airlines, with the appropriate degree of regulation. It is a very heavily regulated industry on a federal level. All airlines do their best to maintain high standards alongside those regulations.

At the time of the Mulroney government, when Air Canada was privatized, there was concern about some of the major servicing sectors in many of the job centres that were part of the crown corporation, part of the government's operation in important markets. They were in Winnipeg, Montreal, and Mississauga. It is quite easy to understand why those markets were so important at the time in those cities. The servicing and claims element was in Manitoba. There was the hub of Pearson airport in Mississauga. The head office of Air Canada was in Montreal. Montreal also has the world renown international headquarters for ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, which governs air travel and recognizes its global footprint. Therefore, Montreal was very much an appropriate home for Air Canada, and continues to be today.

Therefore, there were specific job provisions put in at the time because of concern about the change. This was almost 30 years ago. I have not heard any of my friends in the NDP look for these statistics, but I would bet 90% of Canadians would agree that governments should not own an airline in this modern age. However, they probably understood why 40 or 50 years ago they started out by helping Canadians gain access to air travel. We would not suggest turning the page and going back to Canada running an airline serving Canadians.

The jobs related to those jurisdictions were a critical part of the transition. Prime Minister Mulroney and his government at the time wanted to assure the House and, of course, all Canadians that there would not be radical disruption of the important hubs in Winnipeg, Mississauga, and Montreal by the change, so they had the Air Canada Public Participation Act.

What is the government doing here? It is not destroying this concept, but it is allowing it to evolve, as it should. Rather than specifically naming a geographic coordinate, the changes to section 6(1)(d) of the act allow for a more geographic balancing to Manitoba, to southern Ontario, and to the greater Montreal area, recognizing there still will remain hubs, but giving the company some ability to modernize and to have competitive servicing and operational support for their operations.

As a free market person and somebody from the private sector, I do not think we should be shackling a business to an operational approach that was in practice 30 years ago. The last shackle, in many ways, of the privatization of Air Canada is the modernization of the Air Canada Public Participation Act.

As can be seen from my remarks, in principle, this makes sense. In many ways, it also recognizes what provincial governments have already understood. Litigation launched in Manitoba and in Quebec by provincial governments alongside the labour movement in those jurisdictions was settled in two of the provinces as a result of agreements. There were agreements for job security and some contracting to world-class service providers in Manitoba, and similar commercial agreements were made with Quebec, and litigation pulled away.

What has really happened here, and the minister has not informed the House fully on the circumstances, is Bill C-10 has appeared out of the blue. Was this an effort by the federal government to try to resolve all litigation related to this act? Probably. Was Bill C-10 the result of discussions between the federal government, Bombardier, and Air Canada? Probably. However, we have not heard the minister speak to that. We do know that senior executives from Air Canada met with the minister a few days before Bill C-10 was tabled in Parliament.

Coincidentally, Air Canada committed to buying C Series, Bombardier aircraft. Now it should buy that aircraft because it is among the best in the world, and we are very proud of Bombardier. I will speak about that company in a moment.

However, when we look at this chain of reality, the litigation between the provinces, the difficulties Bombardier has faced, the restrictions in regulations and the restrictions imposed on Air Canada from legislation dating back in 1988, all of this leads up to Bill C-10. The urgency of it and the urgency of the financial assistance the province of Quebec has already given to Bombardier, all of this leads to Bill C-10.

I would prefer if the minister would just say that to the House. I think my NDP colleagues would prefer that as well. Any industry analyst knows why Bill C-10 is before this place.

In my remarks, members can see that, in principle, the full privatization and the unshackling of some of the rules from 1988 should take place. My concern with Bill C-10 is the secret deals, and the very fact that we are asking, in the House, whether the federal government is going to provide assistance to Bombardier, like the province of Quebec has. Have there been any assurances with respect to dual class shares with that company?

Have there been any assurances in terms of whether it will be a loan, whether we will use EDC to backstop other countries buying the C Series aircraft? Indeed, did they work with Air Canada to remedy some of these labour challenges alongside a purchase? I do not think that one needs to be an investigator to see that there is more to Bill C-10 than a few words on the pages of the bill.

The government came to Ottawa saying openness, transparency, that it enjoys consulting in a lot of ways on things. This is one area that we have not received a full background on, and we have not really heard from the minister on what led to Bill C-10 and the backroom deals. That is why I have serious concerns and why I am speaking again on this bill.

I urge the minister, who is an hon. member of the House, and someone who is respected across our aerospace industry as our first astronaut, to level with us. That is what we are supposed to have when we are modernizing this industry. The concerns from organized labour and some of my friends in the NDP would be addressed by more transparency and more direct discussion on amendments to the Air Canada Public Participation Act. There is still time for the minister to be forthright on this.

I have a deep affinity for the Bombardier company. I think all members of the House, particularly the strong Quebec caucus on the Conservative side, have strong passions for Bombardier. I received my wings in the Royal Canadian Air Force after training on the CT-142 aircraft, a militarized version of the Dash-8, for air navigation training that was run out of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

I am very familiar with the aerospace jobs in Winnipeg because they are proximate to where the air base is located on the far side of the international airport. The Royal Canadian Air Force, which I was a proud member of, has its headquarters in Winnipeg. Winnipeg, being at the geographic centre of North America and Canada, will remain an important hub for the aerospace industry, and I think we can be very proud of those jobs.

In many ways, the Conservatives and the Conservative family were in the wilderness for many years because of an ill-timed decision by the Mulroney government to push forward on a servicing contract for CF-18s that impacted Bristol Aerospace in Manitoba. Therefore, no one knows about the aerospace industry probably as much as Conservatives, because it gave rise in many ways to the Reform Party and the split between the PCs for many years. That is not lost on me in this debate.

Conservatives want Bombardier to succeed. We want a modernized corporate structure, an effective governance, and effective leadership within that organization. We want the C Series, which is a best-in-class aircraft. It really will be transformative in terms of fuel efficiency and reducing aircraft noise. It will be transformative for the sector and for that company. It should have orders from across the globe, and they are coming in. However, if orders are related to bills before the House, related to the assistance that governments might offer that company and the flagship carrier of Canada, we should know about that and this should be part of the debate.

I have to raise the fact that why I am concerned is that the murkiness with respect to Bill C-10 also relates to decisions around Billy Bishop airport. I just heard a guffaw from my friend from Spadina—Fort York. That is another case where we did not get the full briefing and discussion by the minister on decisions related to the long-term operations of that important hub. In fact, we were quite disappointed when he tweeted the cancellation of the project, looking into an expansion of that airport. That is an airport that has now become critical to the transportation needs, not just of a few hundred people living on the lakeshore, but of the five million people in the most populous part of our country.

I know the member for Spadina—Fort York does not like the fact that many of his colleagues come to Ottawa each week using Porter, but he has to admit that its location near the financial centre of our country makes it a critical asset that should at least have proper regulatory review and not more insider deals.

Here we have deals being cooked inside the office of the Minister of Transport when he meets with corporate officials. We also have deals being cooked inside the Liberal caucus and in the PMO that actually impact far more than just one riding. It impacts southern Ontario, and the flow of goods and services and people. Whether or not there should be an expansion, those decisions, in a fulsome discussion, should be open and transparent, particularly in the era of sunny ways.

Why is that germane to this debate? It is because Porter was planning to purchase up to 30 C Series aircraft. I know my friend who is enjoying my remarks across the way will likely be out of town when his government announces financial assistance for Bombardier, which it will, and we will look at it very carefully in the opposition. However, the interesting thing is that the Liberals' insider deals prevented a private sector sale of these very aircraft that would help Bombardier thrive.

On the Hill this week, and I was speaking to its representatives, we also have a new ultra-low-cost carrier in Canada looking to start, which is Jetlines airline. It also plans to purchase between 20 and 40 C Series aircraft from Bombardier, provided the government starts setting an open and even playing field within Canada for our airline and aerospace industry.

My friend from Prince George, with his remarkable experience in aviation and the airline and airport industry, knows that a lot of our secondary markets are underserved because we have a restrictive set of rules around airline ownership and the capitalization of our aerospace industry.

Why is that important? In the last government, we were looking at changing that. We had the Emerson report that said because of our small capital markets here in Canada, because the airline industry is indeed global, we should be allowing up to 49% ownership, or capital to come from outside of Canada. It is the same challenge that we face constantly in the resource industry. We have tremendous opportunity, but not necessarily the size of our capital markets to service it. Therefore, we need to draw capital in from around the world.

We also have to recognize that this industry is a global industry. A lot of veterans and friends who I served with in the RCAF fly for Air Canada. I have a friend, Kevin McNaughton, a former CF-18 pilot, who flies for WestJet at the moment. There are also Canadians flying for Cathay Pacific and Qantas. This is a global industry. In fact, my friend from British Columbia consulted around the world: Canadian expertise in terms of aerospace, airlines, and Nav Canada, which is a world leader. This is a global marketplace, and for our airlines to succeed, we need to have an even playing field.

Therefore, I was proud that the last government started evening that playing field somewhat. We allowed more standardized crew days and manning levels for air crews, and for service personnel on the aircraft, such as flight attendants, so that there was the same level of requirement in Canada as for airlines flying into Canada.

We need to also do that in terms of access to capital. We need to allow these small upstart airlines, like Jetlines and others, to have access to foreign capital so that they can acquire aircraft built in Canada. Therefore, I urge the minister to look at the Emerson report; look at unshackling this industry so that Canadians can compete.

There are 76,000 jobs in Canada, and almost $30 billion in GDP from the aerospace industry alone. The aircraft built by Viking Air now that are classic de Havilland, like the Beaver and Twin Otter, are world-renowned aircraft. The C Series will be joining that sort of world-renowned Canadian expertise that has always kept us as the third or fourth most important aerospace country in the world.

Let us have less backroom deals, more transparency, and let us not have another bill that comes to the House like Bill C-10, under the murkiness and indecision that we have seen from the government.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Intergovernmental Affairs)]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member opposite for allowing me to once again try to provide facts and information for the analysis of the party opposite when it discusses the proposal that was never going to go anywhere at Billy Bishop airport. It was never 30 planes. It was never 30 jets. It was 12 jets and 18 Q400s. The Q400 order can still go forward and likely will still go forward, because we have not closed the airport. The airport is still allowed to operate in its current configuration.

The12 jets that the Conservatives tried to shoehorn into an airport is the proposal they keep presenting to us as a viable operation. They wanted to build the Ottawa International Airport on a piece of property that is one-seventh the land mass. It was going to cost close to $1.4 billion to shoehorn in this airport. Is this really the depth of analysis that the Conservatives have brought to this issue? They do not know the number of planes, the infrastructure costs, the length of the runway, and they do not know what the hell they are talking about.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order, please. I want to remind the member for Spadina—Fort York that we want to ensure we use language that is acceptable to all here. I would appreciate that he chooses his words correctly.

The hon. member for Durham.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I accept the apology from my friend fromSpadina—Fort York. In light of recent events, I am just glad he did not run across the way and grab me, as his leader has provided by example.

What I would say to this House, and in response to the member's question when he asked about the depth of analysis, is that the Liberals cut off that analysis. We needed a process where we could look at the viability of that in the long term, the environmental concerns, how it would fit into the transportation of any of the other issues, noise, all that sort of stuff. What the cancellation does is put pressure on Pearson, Hamilton, and the closure of Buttonville. The Billy Bishop Toronto Island Airport is not isolated from a network that serves over five million people. Therefore, the depth of analysis is more than a 140-character tweet from his minister. The government should be allowing this process to run its course, particularly when there was going to be a private sector sale. Whether it was 12 aircraft or 30 down the road, it was going to be a private sector sale, not the government's money.